RPG News: Pelgrane-Hero-Redbrick

What happened in the past year for some Game Publishers of note? And what lies in store in the future? Here's an initial roundup of several publishers I keep track of:

Pelgrane Press

According to their December post, Pelgrane enjoyed a good year in 2011 - more sales, more review, more rewards, and more people playing their games (which, as an armchair gamer, I understand as not necessarily being the same as sales).

Apparently, the Trail of Cthulhu campaign frame Bookhounds of London had a limited edition run which included "The Book of the Smoke", which was a sleeper hit. A sleeper hit? Fine, am gonna hunt that down then -- it's only visible on their site though, and doesn't appear to be in DriveThruRPG/RPGNow or in the PDF copy of Bookhounds. Grrrr.

Ashen Stars, their science fiction offering for Gumshoe broke even, which is good because I rather liked the setting and have decided that combat-light, exploration & investigation-heavy games might be good for short-run play-by-post online games this year. Next year, we can expect a larger campaign book for Ashen Stars called Terra Nova in January.

Other things we can look forward to:

• a collection of four adventures for the Night's Black Agents RPG - a cool little RPG by Ken Hite that calls to my fascination with espionage adventures and a shadow war against supernatural forces;
• more stuff for Trail of Cthulhu
• more stuff for Esoterrorists

Hero Games

In the wake of the reduction of Hero Games's regular workforce by two-thirds, there's apparently a kickstarter out for an RPG supplement called Book of the Empress. The empress in question would be a multiverse-conquering villainess (well known to longtime Hero 5th Edition followers) who has set her sights on Earth: Istvatha V'han.



Also, we can expect the revised 3rd party license for new Hero products out soon - after current licensees review it and give feedback.

Redbrick

A forum post on the new site last year reveals that we can expect four Fading Suns releases from Redbrick every year onwards, starting this year. In Q1, the Fading Suns Player's Guide, and in Q2, the Fading Suns Zoomba Guide -- just kidding -- the Fading Suns Game Master's Guide. Quite a gap between the two, but we're assured that much of the second book is source material and therefore not necessarily a hinderance to longtime fans of the setting.

Some longtime fans wonder: "when in Q1?" Well, according to a translated French site -- January 2012! Then again, it refers back to the forum pages of Redbrick and I can't seem to find that particular date.

As for Q3 and Q4, we can expect two of the following books to come out: House of the Lion [to be written by Angus McNicholl], House of the Mantis [to be written by Gabriel Zarate], Universal Church [to be written by Vidar Edland], Forbidden Lore: Heresies [to be written by Vidar Edland],
Pirates of the Jumpweb [to be written by Todd Bogenrief].

Based on the chosen nomenclature of the books of the Houses of Nobility, one wonders what they'll be calling the books for the Li Halan, The Hazat, and the Al-Malik.

But it won't be all big books; apparently we can expect 3rd Edition shards to come out which should not only give some new gamers sample scenarios, but also let the rest of us know what the Known Worlds is like in the updated milieu.